Polygenic Risk

Polygenic risk is a quantitative measure that weighs the interaction between and within risk factor variants for a disease, as well as their individual contribution to overall heritability. Polygenic risk refers to the heritability of a particular phenotype that is linked to several different genetic variants, which may interact or act independently of one another. Separately, the individual genotypes or genetic markers would not have significant predictive power of inheriting a genotype or disease, but when summed as a polygenic risk score (PRS), they have valuable predictive power. It is an important measure to consider in diseases that are particularly heterogeneous, in their physical manifestation, symptoms, and genetic variants from person to person. Psychiatric disorders in particular often exhibit heterogeneity. This entry discusses the significance ...

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